March 31st;
Robin and I drive around neighbouring towns on a sunny day which deserves to be
called hot. In the bright sunshine all the cars have headlights on by law, because, out on the dry hot plain, mirage & heat haze effects are strong enough to cause
illusions and accidents. We visit several scrap-metal yards in search of fine wire
mesh, ask two fat men loitering around a couple of rusty tractors if they
wish to sell one [they don't], and in a town called
Kengyel
[Stirrup] meet an
incoherent old beekeeper entering a tree nursery through a back gate who cannot
remember the names of the owners, their address or phone number, or anyone who might
know. We have lunch in a
deserted restaurant on the outskirts of a onetime communist model town called
Martfu, and then drive on to Kunszentmarton for a coffee and cake in an empty
patisserie with plaster ceiling decoration and pale wood panelling.
While we are there, Robin tells me about his London friend Kuka and his adventures
buying a house at
Auch
in south-west France.
March 30th;
Wake up on the Great Plain in an empty house, and pour milk on some cereals
I find called 'Zimtos'. Logically enough, they taste mildly of cinnamon.
After lunch Robin and I drive to a funfair visiting Tiszafoldvar to find
six or seven customers wandering around ten or eleven deserted rides and stalls
on the edge of a field in the late afternoon sun. Fearing my old motion sickness, I
shrewdly stay with Chloe the new fox terrier while
Robin, Zsuzsa and Bela climb
into hanging chairs on a go-round-and-round thing. It slowly starts up, then centrifugal
force swings them wider and wider until their chained chairs are hanging at 45
degrees as they all whizz round. A nearby deserted machine belts out a passionate
Falco song
with that hollow outdoorsy sound you only get at funfairs, and Robin
shouts out doubts each time he swings past me: "Excruciating", "Horrible mistake",
"Wise decision" [of me], "Terrifying", and so on. The three get off that ride
quite dizzy and wobble-legged. I am not let on the inflateable fun castle rubber
slide because I'm an adult, but Zsuzsa, Bela and I all drive a dodgem car each
for several minutes - excellent value for money. I hadn't remembered that dodgem
cars have no turning circle at all - you can revolve on a point - wonderful things.
We leave, walking out across the long shadows in the adjacent field, to the sound of a
Hungarian
reggae song. At some point around midnight, finding only Zimtos available
in the larder, Robin describes them to me as the vilest breakfast cereal on the face
of the earth.
March 29th;
Quiet day. Warm sun. In the evening, we follow the
Earth
Hour idea of switching off
all electrical things between 8pm and 9pm local time. We find there are only two
candles in the whole house, so we move around with those, and huddle over the red
glow of the log fire, with blackness all around. Strangely soothing to not
have lights or music or anything on and realise all history was like this.
March 28th;
Sleep lateish and drive with
Robin
out to the Great Plain around midday, picking
up his two daughters from school in Kecskemet and retiring,
to their slight irritation, to a sleepy cakeshop for half an hour, before driving
on to Inoka. Actually warm and sunny - ready for the Hungarian trick of missing
out spring altogether and going straight into summer. We drive into Tiszainoka just as
a funeral is taking place in the graveyard at the end of Robin's drive. It is the
funeral of the mother of Pisti of the Windblown Wall's wife.
In the evening, finish my copy of Peter Carroll's
Liber
Null & Psychonaut. Remarkably concise series of short essays by someone supposedly
from the South Downs, with some nice quotes about it not being for us to question the
tastelessness of the cosmos, and curt warnings about the dangers of going "spectacularly
insane" if some exercises are attempted with insufficient preparation.
March 27th;
Swimming again. Today warmer sunshine and no snow. Another secretarial interview.
By night join Robin and Andrea at what was a charming old patisserie now converted
into a desperately trendy
restaurant.
We meet Chris, who relates how he drives his
car all the way to Kecskemet so as to service it at half Budapest prices, and
Laszlo, who kindly drives us all to another venue and home again.
March 26th;
Go swimming at
pool
on island, where there is brilliant sunshine and snow at
the same time. Meet two more candidates for the secretarial job at a cafe in
Mammut
shopping centre, before a quick tea with Franc at the library. Rediscover 1980s
Hungarian new wave music. How odd that
this
group
didn't conquer the world, hm?
March 25th;
Robin & I drive to Budapest, dropping the girls at boarding school in Kecskemet
on the way. We reach an exhibition of paintings of beige dumb bells at the same
time as Andrea and Istvan. Perhaps because of her dramatic high-heeled shoes,
or perhaps because of her sore throat, the baroness needs a sit down in a
neighbouring bar. We separate, and Robin & I eat some pasta in a restaurant
that alternates a live accordian-player's Left-Bank-Cafe versions of 'A Kiss
is Just a Kiss' & the Third Man theme with a pre-recorded soundtrack of 70s
P-Funk.
March 24th;
Easter Monday. Village boys come round to spray eau de cologne on Letty & Zsuzsa
as part of the annual courtship/fertility/springtime ritual.
Robin's shrewd
10-year-old boy Kasper comes back from himself going a-courting to some local
addresses [and an old people's home], having in the process been given quite a
bit of cash and a couple of stiff drinks. I finish Robin's copy of
'Electricity'
by W.L. Bragg, a re-edition from the 1940s. In the lovely clear style of the time,
Bragg vows to eschew mathematics altogether but instead to use lots of examples to
build up "a kind of electrical common sense" in the reader's mind. Wonderful
black-and-white photographs of suburban transformer stations, pylons, National Grid
control rooms, and three-piece-suited pipe-smoking instructors showing
table-top apparatus to small boys. Excellent line diagrams are plentiful also,
though, sad to see, figures 102 and 103 seem to have been missed out by the
publisher by mistake. I only had to reread the section on
Back EMF
a couple of times. Kind
Franc
reassured me a few nights ago that back emf is not straightforward to grasp at first.
Lovely roast pork for lunch. As darkness falls, I hide some chocolate bunnies and
chocolate eggs around the house for the children to hunt down. While doing this, I
wear a pair of furry ears to create a sense of occasion. A far cry from
the full-size rabbit suit members of the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad wore
while beating suspects into signing false confessions in the 1980s.
March 23rd;
Kristos
anesti - Christ is risen. Egg-painting with the children and Robin in
the late morning,
followed by wonderful lunch of lamb, mint sauce, roast potatoes,
and gravy with red
wine. Then I doze in library while children run egg-and-spoon
race. At 4pm, John from
England and Zsusza from Kecskemet, both retired teachers,
come for tea and cake, and
look round Robin's studio. John explains some of the
charities
he's involved with.
March 22nd;
Quiet
rainy day at Robin's on the Great Plain. Disturbing stories about the
local who incompetently built his wall so it fell down in the wind (I am
at last grasping the difference between Pityu, Rita's Pisti, and Pisti the dodgy
builder). It seems that Pisti of the Windblown Wall builds many things which are not
quite right, and is very vindictive with anyone who complains
about him. It was the insurance assessor who pointed out to me that the brick pillars
were not dovetailed into the wall sections, and therefore, since they offer no support,
were completely pointless.
After dark,
Robin,
Zsuzsa & I play scrabble by candlelight while the kitchen radio plays us opera.
The second piece Robin thinks might be Wagner: it certainly sounds distressing and
dark enough. Later still he reminds me about his good recycling friend Paul, still living
alone in Chester Castle making a living by selling period Star Trek wallpaper by the yard on
eBay.
March 21st;
Get self to Franc's gallery in time to meet 2nd secretarial candidate who has
arrived early for interview. Soothing day, with break at lunch hour for shopping.
Two friendly Croatian photographers come in and look round. Decaff coffee with
Franc
afterwards, then make it to train going out of town to the Great Plain.
Sit down in dining car ten minutes before train pulls out of station, and
exactly one hour later, waiter comes to take my order. Simpering, he explains
that "since there are so many people today" this is why it has taken him 60
minutes to walk down the carriage and write my drink down on his pad. I look
round the dining car at the other nine diners, one of whom has finished her
omlette, five of whom had one drink each, and three of whom seem to have an
empty table in front of them. What can you say at such a moment? If I told him
17-year-old waitresses can take orders from as many tables full of people within
fifteen minutes in a Western country - and that in fact, after factoring in different
costs of living, her salary is lower than his - he simply wouldn't believe me.
There is just no point trying to explain this to him: he sincerely thinks he knows
what hard work is like. And after all, it is Good Friday. It's not as if I've spent
the last hour nailed to a piece of mahogany, so I really shouldn't complain. At
Kecskemet station, I have time to change shirts, give myself a wash and freshen
up in the peculiar men's lavatory with the decorated blue ceiling. I only noticed
two visits ago that the ceiling is painted mid-blue with pieces of 1/2-inch-thick
polystyrene tile glued randomly to it in an approximation to clouds. None are cut into
cloud shapes, instead odd triangles and curved slivers - perhaps from a set of
off-cuts someone had to hand. Last week I was there and heard two men quietly chatting
together in the last stall along, presumably doing a bit of
cottaging,
but this
time I have the whole place to myself. Get on the small stopping train out to
Lakitelek, doing a little reading on the way. Robin meets me at Lakitelek with
a warm, night-time west wind blowing through the empty streets. On our way back
to the house we drop in at the village bar, with its magnificent brown and cream
strips of rubber walling, and meet a cheery local who tells us how much better he
could have built Robin's now-collapsed wall if he had hired him instead. We smile and
nod until the cigarette smoke gets too much and we have to leave.
March 20th;
Coffee
& buns with Zete at the other Auguszt Cafe. One secretarial candidate
makes it to her interview. Strange mixture of sun and snow. Meet a Canadian-American
couple who trade agricultural machinery, holidaying here with their grand-daughters.
A couple of books arrive at my postbox. Start
one about China in cafe.
March 19th;
Apple
battery stops working, completely.
March 18th;
Decaff cappuccino with Andrea at
Auguszt cafe.
March 17th;
Visit
three different shoemenders. Since generous Rob gave me yesterday's bottle of
homemade schnapps, it now lurks in my flat, ready to subdue some
unsuspecting guest. Feel empowered. Beers in evening with Mystery Friend 2.
Three days to
full
moon.
March 16th;
Lunch with Rob, who plies me with chilli-based home-made palinka or schnapps. This is at
his flat with Eti and Mali, his adorable little daughter. Mali
dances to folk songs. I get squiffy enough to refer to Guardian columnists as the 'wankocracy'. Rob
tells me about the Hungarian linguist who translated Winnie the Pooh into Latin,
and another writer, whose widow's tooth was in agony during his exhumation from a World
War II mass grave until the exact moment of reburial. Later, I go to
Franc's,
still drunk, to return
his hammer and German short stories, and we watch
the second half of Ghostbusters 2, and the Black Adder episode where Atkinson's character tries to
upstage Walter Raleigh at the Elizabethan court.
March 15th;
Morning riding at Rita's with Zsuzsi, Kasper and Bela. Brisk wind, but warm sun.
Danillo
drops by for a chat. More
wistful
Back
To
The
Future
stuff from
Stereolab. Robin decides not to come
back to town for party. On train to Budapest meet three charming Phd students from the Central
European University, two Russians and a Turk, all writing theses on imperialism. Shower, change
into dodgy-looking clothing [black leather trousers, pink shirt, red shiny tie from Dave the
LIFFE trader, blue-and-white-striped summer jacket and gold mirror shades] and set off for
Mystery Friend 2's Pimp & Ho party. On the way find there are no trams, and police trucks with
sirens and blue flashing lights have self-importantly parked at angles in the middle of
street junctions to make it look as if they know what to do. Disgruntled men in shiny black
zip-up jackets are wandering around in crowds, grumbling. I ask one pair if the trams have
stopped because of the holiday. "No, because of the breakdown of order", they reply glumly.
Reach Mystery Friend's party, and the girls have made a splendid effort to dress up for the
occasion, though are more than a little irritated when their boyfriends try to get into
character by saying things like "Over here, bitch." Only one girl has not put on lots of
make-up or stilettos, but makes up for it with vigorous flirting.
March 14th;
Go over to the first street in the village to ask Odon to come and clean bricks in the morning.
At dusk, drive with Georgina to Kunszentmarton to pop into a pharmacy. We are in a queue of
ten sullen people for forty minutes as night falls, served by one weary woman filling out
lots of little forms and writing receipts. The usual spotlessly clean yet faintly
depressing House of Drugs done up in best wannabe-German Hungarian style. Cupboards
and fittings done in vanilla-ice-cream yellow and powder blue, with shiny steel
handles on scores of little identical drawers filled with pills. Brushed steel
counter tops. 22 gloomy oil
paintings, all hobby-Impressionist-style country views of trees and dark skies,
neatly fill all spare space along the walls. In the evening, show Robin this
short
Nordic film about some percussionists.
March 13th;
After retiring to futon in library at 9pm, I wake at 5am feeling completely refreshed.
Perhaps an hour of sleep before midnight really is worth two hours after. Porridge
for breakfast again, only today Kasper and I add cinnamon. I start to shave, and
the two boys are so intrigued by my electric shaver we take the cutting heads out
to see how it works.
Robin
and Georgina return from Rome around lunchtime today, missing the
insurance-company
assessor by about half an hour. He phones me from the gate around
11.15, slightly alarmed by Lupi, the guard dog, straining on his chain at the gate end
of his tram rail of heavy wire. I show the assessor the three sections of collapsed wall,
he photographs them, and then comes into the kitchen to write his report and have a cup
of tea with me. We talk a bit about rural poverty and agriculture in Hungary, whereupon
he volunteers that the EU has destroyed Hungarian farming, at the deliberate behest
of the French. I sign his document, and escort him out across one of the sections
of collapsed wall so he doesn't have to go too close to Lupus again. Half past midday
Robin returns, very excited by several days among the grand buildings, beautiful food,
and elegant people of Rome.
March 12th;
Chilly, foggy morning. Curious, I go with the boys to their bus stop to see them get on
their ten past seven school bus. One of their schoolmates joins us. A true yokel,
he stares at me without pause for six minutes in a slack-jawed grin of sheer wonder
to be seeing at first hand someone from a faraway land. Today's project: oxtail soup,
using what in the fridge appears to be segments of an actual ox's tail.
According to the cookbook, this takes three hours,
four if you count the hour of soaking the meat. As it simmers, I redo iron-on
shirt-mend thing with special melting fabric strip. Out in village,
shopping, I find the
postal
van parked somewhere, and pick up some of Georgina's elusive mail.
March 11th;
Yesterday I heard the dogs barking mid-afternoon, and found Odon with his
bicycle, standing politely on the far side of a section of collapsed brick wall.
Close-up, he looked charming, relaxed and remarkably untroubled by his pregnant
betrothed's suicide attempt in early January. We gazed at the wind-flattened section
of what was a five-foot-high wall, lying on the grass between us. Snapping two bricks
apart and crumbling some mortar in his fingers, he mentioned low cement content.
Perhaps a way of tactfully hinting Robin might have been better giving him the
work. This afternoon wait until 5pm for vet to come over to give Lupus his injection.
He drives up at the same moment as Rita comes to collect us for a riding lesson,
so she waits in her car while I try to hold down the big white dog. Lupi has
different ideas, and the sight of the vet keeping ten feet away from the end of
his chain while I stand astride the riled animal holding its head is not very
encouraging. 8-year-old Bela steps in and helps me hold Lupi's head still, The
dog dimly understands he is not allowed to rip the flesh of one of Robin's children,
but clearly regards Bela's initiative as cheating, and crossly wrestles
with both of us while the vet jabs him with steroids. As we step back, the white fluffy
Komondor
gives me a quick bloodless bite on my right hand. Probably a telling
off for my underhand trick of allowing a child into a man-dog standoff.
Once he's chastised me, dog and I are on reasonable terms again.
The two boys and I get into
Rita's car and wave goodbye to the vet who drives off in the other direction.
Riding lesson again with Otello at Rita's nearby field with stables. She
explains that one horse that rocks from side to side in its stall is bored,
and if other horses see it, the bad habit spreads to them, like nail-biting or
yawning. Nearby is a small, half-collapsed kennel of corrugated iron in a group of
trees in the stable yard. Next to the kennel, Bela and I stand and watch
a demented dog chained to a pole who runs round it
barking non-stop, like a mechanical toy. Rita told me yesterday the dog is
not hers. Bela says the dog is mad. I say he would
be mad if he was tied to a post all day. My words seem to have a strange effect.
A few minutes later, out in the field, Kasper casually suggests I might go back to
help Bela. I return to find a giggling Bela tied to a tree with a ball of twine.
I briefly remember Jeff's
Austrian-boy-wrapped-in-sticky-tape incident.
Then I untie Bela. Out on the grass, Otello, ridden by Kasper,
trots, quietly revolving round Rita. Rita's mother,
a
novelist, joins me. We sit on the two
garden chairs facing the huge dusk-lit horizon of field. No dramatic clouds today.
The sky just smoothly darkens as if on a dimmer switch.
March 10th;
Up at six to greet the sun and get the boys ready for school. Explore the three
strangely empty shops in the village in the afternoon. Seem even more thinly
stocked than a couple of years ago. The
man-sized
pentacle is still there, 20 feet up the church tower, though its fairy lights
are switched off.
As day fades, Rita picks Kasper, Bela and me up in her car
and we go for a horse-riding lesson. I go round and round on a black stallion
called Otello as huge dark clouds gather in the dusk sky.
March 9th;
Busy day as Robin and Georgina prepare for their trip to Rome tomorrow. I
finish Franc's copy of
'German
Short Stories 1', a dual-translation collection in Penguin from the early 1960s.
It contains eight postwar short stories by German writers like
Heinrich Bo:ll, Ilse Aichinger and Gertrud Fussenegger, edited by Richard Newnham.
Was relatively diligent, reading a page and a half a day, struggling to match
each German and English sentence. Not sure if it has had any effect on my
pitiful feel for German, but some of the stories were haunting. One goes
backwards from a woman's funeral, with her being carried back to her sickbed,
slowly recovering, revisiting the backstreet abortionist who caused her death,
becoming unpregnant, meeting the man less and less often until they don't
know each other's names, and then further on back into childhood. Another describes
the fateful meeting at a beer garden of two very different men, but who both
suffer from the same speech impediment. One intriguing story is a superficially
suburban tale of three people quarreling over a garden gnome. Another pretends to
be some diary entries by a contractor building Russia's famous fake Potemkin
village in time for the day that Catherine the Great is to pass by.
To bed at 2.30am as Robin and Georgina drive to Budapest for an appallingly
early flight to Italy.
March 8th;
Robin
wakes up with a cup of strong tea while I pack for the weekend. We drop in
at his Turkish butcher, who has the Hungarian version of the cuts-of-beef
diagram on his shop wall, to pick up some lamb. Drive to countryside
in rain. Last week winds on the Great Plain blew down sections of Robin's new
wall, giving the place a slightly wild appearance.
March 7th;
Go to Palace of Arts
to try to get paid. My cash invoice generates a request
to sign four pieces of paper and a half hour wait, but no cash. Long lunch with
the refreshingly bright
Kathrin.
Robin comes to flat later with Film-maker
Peter, over from Reading for a few days. We play him one of Giacomo's
'Black Engine'
discs, and Peter gives me a vinyl 7" record he made of 2 different kinds of crickets
chirruping while Robin dresses for dinner. Peter and I join Daniel for kebab supper,
and Peter tells us about various friends of his: his English friend whose father is a
world authority on mosses, a sound-engineer friend who recorded a fly fighting to escape
a Venus Fly Trap, and a friend who used to play with
Cabaret Voltaire
but now does wildlife-documentary sound work like putting microphones
inside a dead zebra to capture the sound of a carcass being eaten from the
inside out. Later, at his girlfriend's flat over a whisky, Peter plays me some
Nurse With Wound
and the breathy melodies of
Stereolab proteges
Broadcast.
Get back to my flat 5 minutes before Robin returns from Jaap's party.
March 6th;
Wake out of a curious dream involving a chatshow where I and someone else are
sitting in leather armchairs suspended by wires at least fifteen feet up
near the ceiling of a very high room.
Robin has spent night on sofa.
Breakfast together at charming cafe nearby behind the yellow church, where I
meet Imola's friend Zsuzsi for the second day running. She tells me more
about the restaurant Imola has apparently opened somewhere like Dob street.
Afternoon juice & buns with Zsenya, hearing about his lingerie shop and
bureaucratic delays with Hungarian paperwork. Two
long-necked, gazelle-like creatures at the next table preen visibly when they
hear us discussing whether Hungarian girls are prettier than girls from
neighbouring countries, but they turn away huffily when they hear what I say
next. Zsenya says he wants children, adding you cannot have children without the
help of a woman. I tell Zsenya about some men I've known whose wives
seem utterly unreasonable & selfish. I wearily ask him "Is that kind of unreasonable,
spoilt behaviour really the price I have to pay in order to have children?"
Zsenya explodes with laughter. "Yes, Mark!" he cries, loudly and cheerfully.
The long-eyelashed wildebeeste twitch nervously behind their
cafe lattes. "Yes, that really is the price you have to pay if you want to have
children!" he chuckles, amazed I cannot see how life really works.
Beers with slices of lemon in later with
Mystery Friend 2: we are joined by Robin, Albert & Istvan. Mystery Friend is
particularly enamoured of a girl in the bar with us he refers to as the
"porn librarian" type.
March 5th;
Lovely afternoon tea with
Kathrin
from Hamburg. Then see Nora dressed up grandly as she models in a fashion
show of historical costumes at the
Ethnographic
Museum. An audience with a
mixture of ages, including some earnest older ladies in coats & gloves. The girls in gowns
are followed by a musical group involving a double bass, a violin, bagpipes,
backtrack of a human beatbox, a strange weedy mouthpipe-type-thing, and a chubby
rapper in a red sports top yakking in the usual rapid Hungarian idea of hip-hop
speak. As I hear in the second song the
Hungarian for 'Ethnographic Museum' and the English word 'motherfucker' in the
same sentence, I decide it might be time to meet
Franc
for a herbal tea. Join Franc across town at a cafe full of black-and-white photographs of
naked pregnant women for decaffeinated Irish coffee. Then find Robin eating with
Albert & Ildiko in a cellar restaurant later. They are talking about boxers.
March 4th;
Two largeish chimney sweeps turn up to inspect boiler, while I am sanding down a triangle
of wood for my kitchen table. They have the softspoken Gentle Bear
manner that some men adopt. When it is time for me to sign their clipboard,
I find I do not know my landlady's surname.
Eat breakfast on tram, find shoemender, find iron-on-tape for shirt repair, place advert
in newspaper, pick up invoice from
Kalman, and meet Nora for coffee.
She tells me about a thesis she is writing on Aborigines in Australian films.
March 3rd;
Make it over to CEU Business School for evening session with the
Toasties.
Mr
Carlson
practises his Death-The-Great-Teacher speech. Afterwards
Peter says over
a beer he thinks that Chomsky is trying to complete
Russell's
definite-descriptions programme. The
Man from UNCLE
in
another light.
March 2nd;
Sunshine & scattered showers. Walk down street past huge open
building site then
bronze
schoolboys to get to main crescent & tram line.
A strange hundred yards of crushed brick and smashed terracotta tile, along
with scattered broken slats of off-beige plastic roller-blind, suggests
a lorry from the construction site shed some load at some point yesterday.
One of those teenagers-mime-to-an-old-song-in-their-bedroom videos:
surprisingly
good. Near-professional amateurishness.
March 1st;
Up early to meet elegant Miss Szasz under the clock at Moszkva square at 8am. We go to a studio
in Budaors to
begin the day's filming. I am to be a manager so unsympathetic that I shall
reduce a female employee, played by Miss Szasz, to tears. We meet the cheerful camera crew,
Daniel, Damien, and the karate-injured Gergo. Sandor does the genial uncle bit in
the background, Julianna acts the assessor with clipboard, and Zsanna is there to burst
into tears in Hungarian opposite David.
David
is going to attempt an ascent of Everest without oxygen in the second half of this
month, though this is unconnected with the management-training video we make today. A perky little girl
called Blanca is thrilled to meet us, thinking we are real film actors. She tells me off for
my English accent in Hungarian and explains her favourite animal is Pegasus. Bubbly Zsanna
wants her Tarot read. A sudden thunder storm involving hail cuts
the power off to the cameras for quarter of an hour, and it begins to look like we might be
there all night. In her second Celtic Cross spread she draws a reversed Moon, reversed Hermit,
and reversed Princess of Pentacles. Alarmingly large pizzas arrive in three boxes, each one the size
of a desk. Surrounded by pizza, cake & fruit, we gorge ourselves as darkness falls. Just when
I am convinced we will be working until 2am, Miss Szasz & I do our office-hysterics scene surprisingly
quickly, the mountaineer pays me in full on the spot, and we are on the bus back to Budapest
by half past ten.
Mark Griffith, site administrator /
contact@otherlanguages.org
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